Another One Bites the Dust

by Chris Marie Green

  Amanda Lee switched lanes as we took a mild curve in the freeway. “What else did you get from Tim? Anything?”

  “Just some stuff that we already knew, like he’s got a temper that gets him into some scraps. There could be some mommy conflicts, too. She used to tell him he wouldn’t amount to anything.” I paused. “Tim also hates being teased. There was an incident with a coworker who said something about how short he is, and I could sense rage building up because of it. And there was one scene I saw . . .” I trailed off.

  “What?”

  It seemed way too private even to share with my partner in crime. Or whatever Amanda Lee was.

  But holding back information wasn’t an option when you were trying to get someone out of danger. “He was in bed with Nichelle, and I think he might’ve had an ET Phone Home moment.”

  “I have no idea what you mean.”

  Hmm. How to put this delicately. “You know. Shriveled little entity losing its path? Trying to find its way . . . home?”

  “Are you saying you saw Tim going flaccid while he was trying to enter Nichelle?”

  Wow, that was blunt. “Um, yeah. That was my take on it. And he wasn’t happy about losing that momentum, as you can imagine.”

  “My imagination doesn’t quite run that way.”

  That’s right—Amanda Lee didn’t care to picture penises.

  “I wonder,” she said, “if we can also put sexual insecurity on our list of Tim’s traits?”

  “Sounds possible.”

  She was silent for a time, the car’s tires whirring over pavement, the sun shining through the windshield. I wished I could still feel it on my former skin. I’d even be fine with getting a sunburn if I could still have the rays warming me up again.

  But why wish for things you couldn’t have? Sunlight and sand on a beach. The taste of pineapple pizza. Gavin Edgett . . .

  “I think,” Amanda Lee said, interrupting my thoughts, “that we could possibly have an inadequate personality on our hands.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We can go online for a precise definition, but, from all the research I did during my time looking into your killing, I know that it’s a social disorder.”

  “I never came across that when I was researching Elizabeth’s murder. I’ll look it up.” I ran my hand just over the leather of the seat, wishing I could feel that, too. “I think, after we hit the computer, it’d be a good idea for me to go up to my death spot to stock up on some real energy for tonight, for when I go digging.” I knew that going so deep inside a person’s psyche would take a lot out of me.

  “Would you like me to come with you to Elfin Forest?” she asked.

  Did Amanda Lee sound hopeful that I’d want her company?

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’ve got it covered.”

  A few moments passed by, and when she spoke again, her voice was soft. “How was Wendy when you visited earlier?”

  Ah, Wendy of the I-do-not-wish-to-see-you attitude. “She’s as stuck in her ways as always. You were right about her not talking to me.”

  “It could take some time. But I’m starting to have a positive feeling about that and more, Jensen.” She smiled, and I was so unused to the gesture that it took me a second to register it.

  I wasn’t sure if she had more than just a hunch about her positive feelings, but she kept smiling as we drove back to her place, where ghosts were waiting for us on her driveway.

  And everywhere else, really.

  4

  Petty Officer Randy Randall, one of the first ghosts I’d ever met, was sailing around the rest of Amanda Lee’s property, shaming a few lookiloos into leaving us alone, making them fly away.

  He was just getting them cleared, too, except for a couple of modern male spirits hanging over the driveway.

  “Mind yer own businesses!” Randy yelled, veering toward the gray-tinged guys, who were dressed in workout gear like they’d been at the gym lifting weights when they’d died.

  “You’re just a drunk,” one shouted.

  Randy nudged his sailor hat back on his head. “’N’ whass yer excuse for bein’ a fathead?”

  Amanda Lee had rolled down the window upon arrival, so I’d already meandered over, spreading my arms to the gym rats. “Hey, guys.”

  “Hey,” they said, realizing I was the notorious, ballsy, rampaging ghost they’d come to see. Their wide gazes told me so.

  I supposed I should exchange death stories with them since that’s what ghosts do when they meet someone—like exchanging business cards—but I didn’t want them hanging around.

  “Getting an eyeful?” I asked.

  When they nodded, I leaned forward and whispered, “Great. Because a cleaner is on the way over, and she’s real excited about making some ghost foo.”

  New ghosts—and slow-witted older ones—didn’t come with a user manual or anything, so my BS was enough to frighten them off. For all they knew, the human coming up the driveway behind me was the cleaner.

  I waved good-bye at the overly muscled Samsons who were probably ’roided out for the rest of eternity . . . or until they decided to go into the glare to the real afterlife. Whatever that was.

  When they’d disappeared into their travel tunnels, I turned to Randy, smiling. “Looks like you got rid of the ones who were here earlier. There were a bunch of them.”

  “They musta got bored after Amanda Lee left.” He hiccupped. “I only kicked out the few who stayed.”

  “Surely there’s better entertainment in San Diego. Bathing suits at the beach, Sea World . . .”

  Randy’s grin was large and sloshed. He was a contemporary of Louis’, both guys from the 1940s, but young Randy had been passing through San Diego when he’d gotten wasted. In a love-struck mood, he’d wandered over to a bank of rocks in the harbor, mooning over a love letter from his dear girlfriend, Magnolia. He’d lost that letter in the rocks, and while he’d been looking for it, he’d slipped, hit his head, and bled out, leaving another good-looking corpse.

  Okay, maybe good-looking was optimistic. Even with his electric gray hue, I could see that his hair was light and wavy under his cap, but he also had endearingly crooked teeth and a nose just short of pug. And speaking of short, he was that, too.

  He was watching Amanda Lee walk to my casita, her dark skirt flapping in a breeze.

  “So she’s outta the house now,” Randy said. “Scott already told me what precip-dated . . . pre-cip-i . . .”

  “Precipitated?”

  “Yeah. Scott told me what precipidated yer travel ’fore he left here with Amanda Lee.”

  Obviously Randy had just dropped by to veg out with us. “A girl might think that you were waiting for us to get back because you’re as curious about our doings as those lookiloo ghosts. Scott told you about Tim?”

  Before Randy could nod, I made to punch him in the shoulder. He flinched, even though he wouldn’t have felt it.

  “Lookiloo,” I said, waving him toward the casita. “Come on in.”

  He didn’t need to be asked twice, and by the time we got inside my digs, Amanda Lee already had the computer up and running on a page of links.

  “Randy’s here,” I said.

  “I thought I sensed him. Hello, Randy.”

  He gave Amanda Lee a jaunty salute, even though he had to know she couldn’t see it. Then he went to the car battery on a table and draped himself over it. A dopey smile lit his face as he sighed.

  I loitered next to a window while Amanda Lee consulted the computer.

  “According to The American Heritage Medical Dictionary,” she said, “an inadequate personality is ‘characterized by an inability to cope with the social, emotional, occupational, and intellectual demands of life.’”

  I think I knew more than one of these types wandering around the earthly plane. I suspected that Twyla might have even been a good fit if I ever had the chance to do an emotional biopsy on her. Come to think of it, could ghosts empathize with other ghosts or go drea
m-digging? I wasn’t sure.

  Amanda Lee used the mouse to surf to another page. “Heidi was on the right track when she said that Tim fits antisocial markers. We hit a few of them today: Inadequate personalities may not be able to hold down a regular job; they have conflicts with parents, friends, and girlfriends. And, sure enough, there might be insecurity about their sexuality.”

  On the other side of the room, Randy made a well-how-about-that face. It was like it wasn’t fathomable to him that someone might be insecure in that area.

  “This is interesting,” Amanda Lee said. “It says that he might need to have the approval of the women in his life, but at the same time, he wants to be in control. A person like this can also alter his personality so it gets him what he needs. He can be grandiose in his feelings, and fights with a girlfriend might make him doubt his manhood at times.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t go overboard here. We might want to step back and ask ourselves if we’re fitting Tim into a mold that Heidi wants him to fit.”

  “We’ll know after you’ve gotten a feel for his subconscious. It would be good if you knew what to look for, though.”

  True. Tonight, I would keep my eye out for things I hadn’t quite seen to my satisfaction already, like grandiose feelings and getting approval from Nichelle.

  Randy spoke up. “I don’t know much about nothin’, but a fellow like this . . . He don’t seem like a big bad man. Just . . . confused.”

  Taken aback by his interest in something other than raiding bars, I told Amanda Lee what he’d said.

  She tilted her head and leaned away from the screen, nodding toward Randy. She might’ve been hearing him but couldn’t decipher the sounds he was making. Sometimes I felt like that with him, too, though.

  “Not that I’m an expert,” she said after I’d finished, “but Randy’s right. I know there are different types of deviant behaviors, and what it sometimes boils down to is whether the person has a conscience or not. Some bad people are remorseless. I’m not certain that’s who we’re dealing with in Tim—if he even has the makeup of a man who’d hurt his girlfriend.”

  I’d done a bit of criminal research, too, while looking into Gavin, and I’d read about serial offenders, just as Amanda Lee had: There were a certain kind who would never stop committing crimes until they were stopped. Those were the ones without a conscience, like the Night Stalker in the 1970s. But deviants who did have a conscience could be driven by very human emotions like greed, jealousy, revenge, profit, anger . . . Their crimes usually stopped when a particular emotional problem was taken care of.

  But we were getting ahead of ourselves, jumping to conclusions like we’d done with Gavin. Tim hadn’t committed any crimes to judge by.

  Randy was scratching his head under his cap. “Back when I was an alive person, I knew a fellow in high school, ’fore I went off to the navy. He didn’t care ’bout nothin’. Did what he wanted to, no matter who it hurt. Grabbed girls ’n’ kissed ’em on the street, even if they smacked ’im for it. He got into some trouble, put into the slammer once ’cos he knifed a man durin’ a fight in back of a moviehouse in Atlanta jus’ for fun. I was there. He didn’t regret it one bit. Had a smile on his face the whole time. . . .”

  I relayed the story to Amanda Lee, then asked, “What happened to him?”

  “I heard he got stabbed in the gut one night.” Randy shook his head. “But this boy . . . You’da never known the trouble he could get into jus’ from talkin’ with ’im for an hour. Charmin’ as the devil. Picked the right friends who’d get into mischief with ’im. Good at lyin’ and tellin’ people what they wanted to hear. A bad person on the inside but a winner on the out.”

  “Tim definitely doesn’t seem like that type,” I said after telling Amanda Lee. “He doesn’t come off as a winner at all.”

  Randy lifted a brow, then slurred, “Oh, this boy was real good at that, too. Knew how to win the pity from those who counted. He got away with a whole lot ’cos of pity.”

  I chewed on that until Amanda Lee gave me an impatient glance and I again filled her in on what Randy had just told me.

  Then she said, “There’s something other than computer surfing that might help us in this. We still have hours before Tim’s shift is over and he’s asleep. I know a man who could offer insight into antisocial behavior . . .” Her face went stony.

  Right away, I realized this had to do with Elizabeth, but I didn’t prompt Amanda Lee to go on. Even Randy knew enough to stay quiet until she was ready.

  She swallowed hard, then said, “He investigated Elizabeth’s case for me. And yours, Jensen, but I’ve told you that he worked for her fictional fiancé so you wouldn’t ever connect him with me if you bothered to research it.”

  I could feel a surge of surprised energy from Randy, but my own head was humming. Loud.

  Amanda Lee got up from her chair before I could start in on her for keeping this information from me, even after I thought she’d come totally clean about all the lies she’d told me. What the hell? Hadn’t she learned a thing?

  “I haven’t talked to Ruben in a while,” she said, lifting her hands to me in a plea. “I hired him to research your case, and the others before you who I couldn’t make contact with.”

  I’d found out that she’d tried to raise other ghosts from their death spots before me to help her with Elizabeth, but I hadn’t known that this PI really existed.

  “You didn’t tell me about him before because you wanted me to concentrate only on Elizabeth and not on my death?” I asked. Manipulated. Controlled by the great Amanda Lee, once again.

  I had the overwhelming urge to fly at her, to get into her head once and for all so I could discover everything she’d ever hidden from me, but Amanda Lee . . . she could block like a pro.

  “You think now’s a good time to tell me about him?” I asked tightly. “Or wait. Maybe over a month ago would’ve been perfect.”

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “It would’ve been a perfect time in a less complicated world.”

  Randy had started to tiptoe toward the door, where he’d be able to slowly seep through a crack.

  Amanda Lee said, “I’ve done psychic readings on this PI without his knowledge, and he’s never held back information from me, so I didn’t think he’d be—”

  “Worthwhile for me to contact. Why didn’t you leave that up to me?”

  “I wasn’t thinking straight. Not after the Edgetts. And you already know why I didn’t say anything about him while we were investigating Elizabeth.”

  Because she’d wanted me all to herself.

  I had to get out of here, just like in the past, whenever I’d stumbled over one of her lies. But, dammit, this wasn’t actually a lie, just an omission, something fairly innocent, at that. Still. Amanda Lee could’ve been more of a help to me in finding out how I’d died, and that truth stung.

  “I’m going to contact Ruben Diaz today,” she said, looking at me as if asking me not to leave yet. “We can pick his brain about criminal pathology. I’m sure he’ll help us. He’s a kind soul who feels terrible that he never did right by you.”

  It felt as if my so-called nerve endings were on fire. Talk about a temper—I’m not sure Tim Knudson had anything on me at this point, because my anger was flaring, threatening.

  Even though I wasn’t human, I still felt like one.

  Did we all have the ability to cover up violent thoughts like the ones I was having?

  But did having them necessarily mean we’d act on them?

  Amanda Lee was writing down an address on a pad of paper by the computer. She straightened her spine, then slid the pad in my direction before walking to the door.

  “I didn’t keep this information from you on purpose,” she said. “If Ruben is open to meeting me in an hour or two, after you recharge at your death spot, this is where I’ll be with him.”

  She went to the door, opened it, then left me with a sorry expression on her face that made me wonder if she felt just
as prejudged as Tim.

  • • •

  It was a quick, outrage-fueled trip in my travel tunnel to Elfin Forest, with its gnarled roads and dense trees that clawed out the full sight of the sun.

  There were probably as many legends about this place as there were leaves on the oaks—everything from rumors about a White Lady who wandered around, to a band of late-nineteenth-century gypsies who settled in the dark alcoves and got slaughtered because they refused to abandon their homes. It was said that the deaths cursed the area, bringing a ton of paranormal activity.

  I hadn’t run into any of these spirits yet in the forest, and you can bet I wasn’t about to with the way I was canvassing the area now. I’d never seen much of anything here except for the occasional hiker and burnedout remains from fires. Thank God, too, because there was one scary legend that’d always given me the heebie-jeebies, even back when I’d been a premurdered carefree human drinking beer and laughing with my friends in the woods, daring all its urban legends to come and get us.

  Even now I was cautious about the witch who was said to haunt the forest. And this was even before that Blair Witch Project movie, which I’d seen recently during all the idle time I’d had after the Edgett case. This particular witch was supposed to ride around on a spectral black stallion, cloaked in face and body-shrouding darkness, like one of those Nazgûl characters in Lord of the Rings, right? But this witch could intuit whenever someone entered the woods, and she would mark them with a curse that would be activated if you were dumb enough to ever come back. Oh—and you wouldn’t ever know that you were marked. Brilliant story to keep the trespassers away if you lived here, huh?

  There was also supposed to be an old, burned insane asylum, a religious cult, and ghostly bodies hanging from trees, so you see why this place would be catnip to legend-tripping youngsters. Even forest fires hadn’t burned them out.

  I flew over charred trees to a part of the woods that hadn’t ever been marked by fire damage. I came to the site of my death, drawn to a nearby oak tree and its extended, low branch that rode the ground, curved like a U. I got a charge out of just being so close. Some ghosts loved to chill out at the sites of their demises, but not me, uh-uh.